Now accepting free gear...

Thanks for the info!

Thanks for the info! Some very good food for thought!

 

My question is...

if you teams are not getting very little money why work football games. Take a stand and tell the booster club that unless they start being a little more fair with the money you will not be working the football games. If all teams did this I bet things may change.

 

Excellent !!

Where have you been ??

Guru

 

Here was my answer...

At our school the AD is also the football coach. To refurbish football helmets every year they spend over $100.00 each on them, $100 x 50 players adds up to at least $5,000. When I asked him about parity for softball his response to me was..."when softball starts bringing in the revenue that football does, then we will talk about it".

Keep in mind that the most games our football team has won in the last 5 years has been 3 and they have never made it out of the first round of the playoffs. Our softball team has won 20 games the last 3 years in a row and have gone to the 3rd and 4th round of the playoffs for the last 3 years. We also draw huge crowds to watch our girls play, so we could easily fund ourselves if we kept the money that we made.

My answer to the AD was..."if you would make the cheerleaders, marching band and color guard come to all of our softball games, we would probably make just as much money as football!" Makes you think doesn't it??

 

EXACTLY!

We work the games because we want to help all the team sports but we do want our girls to get a decent slice of the pie.

 

My wife and I too have joined the booster club, and honest to God, when we requested money the response was..."Why, when was the last time softball won anything..."I talked to my AD and requested a cheap bat and a couple of tees (less than $250)...we can get them if the girls sell $2000 dollars worth of discount cards...

 

Booster Club

I think it's about the same everywhere. I am VP of our Booster Club also. I still don't have any say, none of us do. It is always up to the AD, if he does not bring it to the meeting for a vote, it is never seen at all. Our SB coach asked for a few helmets(5), a bag to carry them and machine balls last year. He was turned down for the balls, we did get the bag and 5 helmets. We had 13 machine balls at the time, I even took one that had split in half to the meeting to show everyone what we were dealing with. That ball had actually hit a girl as it split upon being pitched from the machine. We still did not get balls, the AD never asked for them so we didn't vote on them. But, we did send our football coaches to a coaches clinc to the tune of $1500. And the football players had their names on the back of their jerseys. We, the Booster Club, also purchased a laptop, camera and software system to tape games etc. Has any other coach even seen it? ($4500.) I don't think so. The statement I got from the AD when asked about fairness was that it is even, since he has been AD, it has been fair. LOL, funny. Also since the SB coach raised money and purchased new uniforms last year, we go to the bottom of the rotation. We won't get new ones from athletics for 4 years. And our Booster Club is not allowed to buy "cloth" for any of our teams.

My job as VP is to have workers for concessions, all of them, all year.

 

It's not about winning games. It's about developing kids! But if their concern is winning games it is well known that the more expensive bats make a huge difference in the type of hit they get.

The more I read the more it sounds like your school is totally out of line with the intended goals of title IX. Someone needs a rude awakening!! I suggest you get someone to pursue the title IX issues. Maybe send a copy of the Wilmington article to your local news media.

You have a worthy cause; don't let it die! Anyone who can support your cause has a duty to do so if they care about the kids!!

 

OK, you got me stirred up! I sent an email to the Enquirer Journal asking that they do something similar to what was done in Wilmington by the Star-News.

I also asked that if they couldn't do anything in that regard that maybe they could send a sponsor your way.

The girls need coaches like you who will stand up for them!

PS: I didn't mention you or your position as my source of info to the paper. I mentioned the baseball/softball teams in general.